Population

Human medicines European public assessment report (EPAR): Rivaroxaban Viatris (previously Rivaroxaban Mylan), rivaroxaban, Date of authorisation: 12/11/2021, Revision: 5, Status: Authorised

• They announced the way forward as the “Blue Pacific – Our Sea of Islands, Our Livelihoods, Our Oceania”.
• It’s a revealing example of how the study of the Pacific and the practice of Pacific politics often intersect.
• Rapidly, the Blue Pacific – a story about a place – had become a new place.
• Regional organisations connected through the Blue Pacific, and it became a cornerstone of diplomatic and national language.

New names, old stories

• Holding together the new movement – which was launched at a moment of considerable difficulty for the region – was an old story.
• The Forum leaders and others around it explicitly referred to the Blue Pacific as a narrative.
• As the Samoan Prime Minister put it, “[t]he Blue Pacific provides a new narrative for Pacific Regionalism and how the Forum engages with the world”.

The Indo-Pacific as geopolitical construct

• The Indo-Pacific is now a geopolitical construct said to encompass the Indian Ocean, the South China Sea, and shifting, unspecified parts of the Pacific Ocean.
• In other words, it both marginalises and co-opts the Indigenous Pacific of which I write.
• Read more:
  Australia has long viewed the Pacific as a place of threats that must be contained.
• Such is the power of this particular narrative and construct that it is central to many of the most vital geopolitical discourses and activities globally.

An unequal ocean

• Though there is a vibrancy to Indigenous traditions and narration, they do not have the same access and circulation; the Pacific remains an unequal ocean.
• In very few areas is this not apparent, but I wish to draw attention to one specific way in which the colonial, and particularly the decolonising experience, shaped the unequal oceanscapes of the present: mobility.
• The terms and conditions of formal decolonisation – what I think of as the decolonising bargain – was a bargain struck in profoundly unequal times and in unequal ways, where much of the power lay with former colonial rulers and international players.

‘New blackbirds’

• The Pacific diaspora, so deeply conditioned by the decolonising bargain, has not mattered equally to Pacific nations recently.
• In smaller islands and nations these opportunities have seen mobility on remarkable scales; Niue is perhaps the most striking.
• Since the 1970s the number of Niueans in Niue has declined by around two-thirds, falling from over 5,000 to less than 2,000.
• As elsewhere in the former (or, as some might contend, currently) colonised world, the visible benefits of colonialism are not readily evident.

Mobility and sovereignty

• In each of these places, Indigenous Pacific migrants experience outcomes that more closely match their Indigenous neighbours than those of Pākehā/Papālagi/white populations.
• There are also other costs that these Indigenous Pacific people confront — paid in language, culture, well-being, identity, independence and sovereignty.
• The transnational dimensions wrought by those Indigenous folks afforded mobility are profound.
• As Epeli Hau‘ofa so powerfully put it, these Pacific peoples can craft lives that resonate with the mobility of the ancestors.
• But the majority of Pacific peoples do not have access to transnational mobility.

Damon Salesa does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• John Pilger, a giant of journalism born in Australia in 1939, has died at the age of 84, according to a statement released online by his family.
• His numerous books and especially his documentaries opened the world’s eyes to the failings, and worse, of governments in many countries – including his birthplace.

‘I am, by inclination, anti-authoritarian’

• Whatever the merits of Waugh’s criticism, they are, in my view, outweighed by the breadth and depth of Pilger’s disclosures in the public interest.
• It is my duty, surely, to tell people when they’re being conned or told lies.
• I am, by inclination, anti-authoritarian and forever sceptical of anything the agents of power want to tell us.

Telling the stories of ordinary people

• Like many of his generation, he moved to the UK in the early 1960s and worked for The Daily Mirror, Reuters and ITV’s investigative program World in Action.
• He reported on conflicts in Bangladesh, Biafra, Cambodia and Vietnam and was named newspaper journalist of the year in Britain in 1967 and 1979.
• He made more than 50 documentaries.
• He did this by telling the stories of ordinary people he had encountered, whether miners in Durham, England, refugees from Vietnam, or American soldiers returning from the Vietnam War – not to parades, but to lives dislocated by the silence and shame surrounding the war’s end.

The world has lost a resolutely dissenting voice

• In Welcome to Australia [Pilger’s 1999 film], he concentrated on the bad things that were happening but not the good.
• He’s a polemicist and, if you want to arouse people’s passions and anger, the stronger the polemic, the better.
• Whatever flaws there are in Pilger’s journalism, it feels dispiriting that on the first day of a new year clouded by wars, inaction on climate change and a presidential election in the US where democracy itself is on the ballot, the world has lost another resolutely dissenting voice in the media.

Matthew Ricketson is the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance’s representative on the Australian Press Council.

• Some of these nations have been dealing with simmering unrest, however, which could erupt in 2024 and seize the global spotlight.
• Here are five places where I believe civil conflicts or unrest could worsen and potentially lead to violence.

Myanmar

• Myanmar descended into chaos in 2021 when a military coup overthrew the democratically elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi and sparked widespread civil protests that eventually morphed into an armed resistance.
• The country, home to 135 ethnic groups, has rarely known peace.
• This exploded after the coup as ethnic militia groups joined forces with pro-democracy fighters from the Bamar majority protesting the junta.

Mali

• In Mali, a nation in the turbulent Sahel region of Africa, tensions escalated throughout 2023 and now threaten to erupt into full-scale civil war.
• A United Nations peacekeeping mission was established in 2013 to bring stability to Mali.
• Then, in 2015, key rebel groups signed a peace agreement with the Mali government.
• Read more:
  Mali crisis: UN peacekeepers are leaving after 10 years – what's needed for a smooth transition

  After two more coups in 2020 and 2021, military officers consolidated their power and said they would restore the state’s full territorial control over all of Mali.

Lebanon

• In 2019, widespread civil protest broke out in Lebanon against leaders who were perceived not to be addressing the day-to-day needs of the population.
• The International Monetary Fund criticised Lebanon in September for a lack of economic reform.
• Most recently, the war between Israel and Hamas has threatened to spill over to Lebanon, home to the Hezbollah militant group, which claims to have an army of 100,000 fighters.

Pakistan

• Pakistan also faces spillover from instability in neighbouring Afghanistan and increased terror attacks.
• Pakistan is expected to hold parliamentary elections in February 2024, after which the current military caretaker government is expected to transfer power back to civilian rule.
• Read more:
  How Imran Khan's populism has divided Pakistan and put it on a knife's edge

Sri Lanka

• Sri Lanka faced a debilitating economic crisis in 2022 that led to critical fuel, food and medical shortages.
• Stability returned in 2023 as Sri Lanka began implementing economic reforms as part of a bailout agreement with the International Monetary Fund.
• Elections are also due in Sri Lanka by late 2024.

Jessica Genauer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.