Protest Tuesday In Wellington : Stop US Aggression Against Iran
This is a war of opportunity the U.S. and Israel are trying to topple the government of Iran to advance their own regional and geopolitical objectives. They should be viewed as rogue states.
Wellington peace group Just Defence has teamed with Justice for Palestine to organise a 'snap action' demonstration on the Defence HQ lawn on Bowen Street on Tuesday June 24 from 12.30pm to 1.30pm.
Similar protests are happening around the world as the U.S. launches yet another war of aggression, this time against Iran.
As with all their previous wars, there is a narrative that does not stand up to scrutiny. For the past 20 years the collective agencies who comprise the U.S. intelligence community have said Iran does not have an active nuclear weapons programme. So does the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the IAEA.
Iran was not on the brink of attacking anyone. Negotiations were ongoing. This moment was seized on to attempt regime change. This nuclear issue is being used as a pretext, just as fake narratives about Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction were used by the U.S. and its allies to wreck Iraq following its invasion in 2003.
We must not let another country be destroyed by the U.S. and Israel. We urge our government to distance itself from these violent, irresponsible states which are simultaneously committing genocide against the people of Palestine.
This is a war of opportunity – the U.S. and Israel are trying to topple the government of Iran to advance their own regional and geopolitical objectives. They should be viewed as rogue states.
Aotearoa New Zealand should reject this US-Israeli militarism that includes:
The surprise attack on Iran
The genocide in Gaza
The relentless attacks and land thieving on the West Bank
Assassinations across the region
Bombings in Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, and Iraq.
Aotearoa needs to stand for peace, justice and an end to wars of aggression.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
NZ Herald
6 hours ago
- NZ Herald
US farmers fear Trump immigration crackdown threatens food security
'There's a whole food chain involved,' from field workers to truck drivers to people working in packing houses and in sales. 'It's just, everybody's scared,' she said - even a multi-generational American like her. 'I'm nervous and I'm scared, because we're feeling like we're being attacked.' Other farmers contacted by AFP declined to speak to the media, saying they feared potential reprisals from the Trump administration. Worker shortages The agricultural sector has for years been trying to find permanent solutions for its perennial labour shortages, beyond issuing temporary permits for migrant workers. 'Some of the work we have is seasonal,' Tate says. 'But really, around here, we need workers that are year-round.' The number of government-certified positions for temporary agricultural workers practically tripled between 2014 and 2024, Department of Labour statistics show, underlining just how much American agriculture depends on foreign workers. On top of that, some 42% of farm workers are not authorised to work in the United States, according to a 2022 study by the Department of Agriculture. Those numbers line up with the struggles many farmers go through to find labour. They say US citizens are not interested in the physically demanding work, with its long days under extreme temperatures, rain and sun. Against that backdrop, Tate warns that removing people who are actually doing the work will cause immeasurable damage. Not only will it harm farms and ranches, which could take years to recover, it will also send food prices soaring, and even endanger US food security, possibly requiring the country to start importing provisions that may previously have been grown at home, she says. 'What we really need is some legislation that has the type of programme that we need, and that works for both the workers, that ensures their safety, it ensures a fair playing field when it comes to international trade, as well as domestic needs,' Tate said. 'Everyone loses' Some farmworkers agreed to speak to AFP on condition of not being fully identified, for fear of being arrested. 'All we do is work,' a worker named Silvia told AFP. She saw several friends arrested in a raid in Oxnard, about 16km west of Ventura. The 32-year-old Mexican lives in constant fear that she will be the next one picked up and, in the end, separated from her two US-born daughters. 'We're between a rock and a hard place. 'If we don't work, how will we pay our bills? 'And if we go out, we run the risk of running into them,' she said, referring to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. 'The way the government is working right now, everybody loses,' said Miguel, who has been working in the fields of southern California for three decades. The 54-year-old said that workers are losing jobs, farm owners are losing their labour, and as a result, the United States is losing its food. Miguel has worked in various agriculture sector jobs, including during the Covid-19 pandemic. All of them were 'very hard jobs,' he said. Now he feels like he has a target on his back. 'They should do a little research so they understand. The food they eat comes from the fields, right?' he said. 'So it would be good if they were more aware, and gave us an opportunity to contribute positively, and not send us into hiding.' - Agence France-Presse
NZ Herald
8 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Not only are rising seas causing people to leave, but warming waters are forcing out tuna
By morning's end, the pair had caught eight tuna - a haul far smaller than when Petaia's father taught him to fish 30 years earlier. 'We have to spend longer and go farther to get them,' the 48-year-old said as the fishermen unloaded their catch. 'I'm not sure there will be any tuna left by the time I'm my uncle's age,' added Smoliner, 22. Tuna is a pillar of life in the Pacific, where for centuries people have braved the ocean to bring back yellowfin, skipjack, bigeye and albacore for their families. In recent decades, as global demand for tuna has soared, Pacific Island nations including Tuvalu have propped up their struggling economies by selling licences to allow international fishing companies to trawl their vast exclusive economic zones. These seas provide as much as one-third of the world's tuna supply. But climate change is warming the world's oceans at an accelerating rate, threatening livelihoods. Scientists predict that climate change will push tuna away from Pacific Island nations and towards the high seas, where wealthier countries with large fishing fleets - China, Japan, South Korea and the United States - will catch them without paying licence fees. It is yet another climate danger for a country - population 10,000 - whose existence is already threatened by rising seas, increasingly powerful storms, and a potential exodus of people. 'It's ironic that the ocean, which has been the sustainer of our livelihood and economy, suddenly poses all these threats to us,' Tuvalu's Prime Minister, Feleti Teo, said in an interview here. Ranol Smoliner, right, and his uncle Kauaka Petaia fish for tuna in the Pacific Ocean near Funafuti, Tuvalu, in early April. Photo / Carolyn Van Houten, the Washington Post This low-lying atoll nation has become a premonition of climate change. Its leaders have made desperate pleas - including one delivered while thigh-deep in water - about the existential threat of rising sea levels. The potential exodus of fish threatens to strip Tuvalu and other Pacific Island nations of the very money they need to fight the impacts of global warming. About 60% of Tuvalu's locally generated government revenue comes from fees foreign countries pay to fish for tuna in its waters, Teo said. That revenue has plunged by about 40% over the past five or so years, denting the tiny nation's overall budget by almost 6%. Scientists say it's hard to know how much of that recent drop is due to climate change as opposed to natural migration linked to ocean cycles. But scientific modelling suggests Tuvalu could lose one-quarter of its tuna by 2050. Efforts are under way to help Tuvalu and 13 of its neighbours track how tuna populations are shifting and to demand remuneration. They were recently awarded more than US$100 million ($166m) from the Green Climate Fund (GCF) to help adapt. 'Pacific Island countries are fighting hard to establish our rights to be compensated for fish that are caught in the high seas,' Teo said. 'If we are able to definitively assert that the stock that used to occur in our EEZ is now in the high seas as a result of climate change, then that will strengthen our case.' Warming waters are also bleaching local corals, depleting reef fish that Tuvaluans depend on for food. Some of the fund grant will go towards fish aggregation devices: floating structures that help lure larger ocean fish, including tuna, closer to shore for locals to catch. Coral bleaching also disrupts the natural wave protection of atolls like Tuvalu and the replenishment of their shores, said Arthur Webb, who led the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project to reclaim swathes of desperately needed land in the capital. Each day, a dredging machine in Funafuti's lagoon sucks up sand and pumps it onto reclaimed areas. Sand is also pumped into large bags that are stacked to form protective seawalls. The new land is left to settle before building, which has yet to begin. Tuvalu's ring-shaped land mass covers only 26sqkm and is less than 1.5km across at its widest point, sometimes narrowing to a mere 18m. Photo / Carolyn Van Houten, the Washington Post Tuvalu is roughly 1.5m above mean sea level. Its waters are now rising by about 2.5cm every five years - well above the global average - and estimated to reach 60 to 90cm by 2100, according to Moritz Wandres, an oceanographer with the Pacific Community. By 2060, once-in-50-year floods are predicted to occur every five years, rendering Tuvalu uninhabitable without large-scale adaptation efforts, Wandres said. King tides already routinely inundate much of Funafuti, where motorbikes splash through the water seeping up through the sandy ground. Tuvalu is preparing. It has amended its constitution to protect its statehood and maritime zones, even if it no longer has any land. And it announced a plan to clone itself in the metaverse, preserving its history and culture online. In 2023, Australia provided a more tangible escape plan when it created special visas, at least in part, to help up to 280 Tuvaluans per year escape the wrath of climate change. More than 80% of Tuvalu's population - or 8750 people - has applied for the visa, according to official Australian figures released last week. The predicted decline in tuna will only hasten the outflux. 'This is our only resource,' said Laitailiu Seono, a Fisheries Department officer, as he carved up tuna to be dried and sold. 'That's why we really want to look after them. No fish, no job.' Compounding Tuvalu's anxieties, the US Trump Administration has dealt Pacific Island nations another blow, suspending US$60m per year in South Pacific Tuna Treaty funds for the region - part of a long-standing deal to guarantee US fishing access. During his presidency, Joe Biden promised to double the tuna treaty funds in a bid to counteract China's efforts to woo Pacific Island countries. Instead, Teo said, Tuvalu had yet to receive roughly US$7m it had been counting on: 'A big hole in our projected revenue'. Children play on a seawall surrounding reclaimed land in Funafuti. Tuvalu, a low-lying island nation endangered by rising seas, is building up swathes of land for housing, even as many inhabitants contemplate leaving. Photo / Carolyn Van Houten, the Washington Post At the same time, President Donald Trump's decision to open up the 400,000-square-mile (1,100,000sqkm) Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument to commercial fishing suggested he could scrap the treaty altogether. Like other Trump Administration moves - pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, cutting US Agency for International Development funding and climate financing, and potentially putting travel restrictions on some Pacific countries, including Tuvalu - abandoning the treaty would hurt America's strategic interests and boost that of its stated rival, China, said Alan Tidwell, director of the Centre for Australian, New Zealand, and Pacific Studies at Georgetown University in the US. 'If the US pulls out totally from the Pacific, then someone has to fill that role,' agreed Teo, whose nation is one of only three in the region that still recognise Taiwan instead of China. 'And we know who is eager.' A State Department spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the department 'will continue … to align its activities and programmes with the foreign policy priorities of the president and the secretary.' When Kauaka Petaia returned to shore, his son Siuele was there to help him unload the tuna. The 27-year-old said he had no desire to follow in his father's footsteps. Instead, he would soon head to Australia to work in a meatpacking plant, where the pay is more certain. 'By 2030 or 2050,' he said, 'I don't know if tuna fishing will still be a job in Tuvalu.'
RNZ News
10 hours ago
- RNZ News
US and EU reach trade deal after Trump meets EU chief
world world politics 28 minutes ago The US and EU have just reached a trade deal, after talks between President Trump and the EU president Ursula von der Leyen in Scotland. Correspondent Nick Harper spoke to Ingrid Hipkiss.
