A New Zealand story that Asean can learn from

 

New Zealand - Wikipedia

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 New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern reacts following the announcement of her resignation at the War Memorial Hall in Napier, New Zealand, on Jan. 19. (Reuters/AAP Image/Ben McLay) 

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern won the hearts of Muslims across the globe when she, wearing a headscarf, comforted the families of victims of the massacre in two mosques by a white supremacist in Christchurch in 2019. Last Thursday, she again astonished an even larger audience with her abrupt resignation, although she stands a great chance to win the upcoming election in October.

The mother of four-year-old Neve Te Aroha Ardern Gayford has undoubtedly made a name for herself as an icon of statesmanship. She has played a role model of a leader who not only does her best for her nation, but also knows when to fade away to ensure a sustainable succession. She could have sought a third term, but she shows she is not hungry for power.

"The responsibility to know when you are the right person to lead and also when you are not. I know what this job takes. And I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it justice. It's that simple," the 42-year-old politician said of her reason to step down.

With a population of 5 million, New Zealand is a tiny nation. But its economic size ranks the country among the world’s richest. The country is a permanent dialogue partner of ASEAN along with the United States, China, the European Union, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Russia and India. Unlike close neighbor Australia, which acts as the deputy sheriff of the US, New Zealand has distanced itself from the rivalry of major powers.

Through her exemplary decision, Ardern has taught politicians, male and female, a lesson that they should be ready to leave office when the public do not want them anymore, or else the people will force them to go. Some leaders are willing to step down but prepare their own men or children as successors, but this is clearly not the case in New Zealand under Ardern.

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo may have to ask his die-hard supporters who have been pushing for his term extension to reflect on Ardern’s bold decision. To prevent rampant abuse of power, which was rampant during the New Order authoritarian rule, the Constitution was amended in 1999 to limit presidential tenure to only twice.

In fact, Indonesian political culture knows no resignation. Politicians or officials tend to cling on power as long as possible by justifying all means.

Ardern won the Labor Party leadership shortly before she won the 2017 election. Her party further won the 2020 election. At that time she was facing at least three major challenges which she could overcome: The 2019 shooting spree of Muslims, the COVID-19 pandemic and the eruption of the White Island Volcano. Her strict lockdown policy to contain the COVID-19 transmission was much criticized, but later she proved she was right and her critics wrong.

The Labor Party elected Education Minister Chris Hipkins as Ardern’s successor on Sunday. The party hopes Ardern’s graceful exit will help it win the October election.

The world loves to see her as a true mother of New Zealand. Her ability to simultaneously perform her state and personal responsibilities, as a mother and wife, inspired and was looked up to by women all over the world. From the beginning, she has proven that women can break the glass ceiling when it comes to the highest office, which in advanced democracies like the US has not yet happened.

She has taught a precious lesson to world leaders that they should know when to call it quits. A true leader will not wait until his or her people force them to go. And we all owe it to Ardern’s beautiful mind.

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Victoria University of Wellington

The University of Auckland

 

 University of Otago, University of Otago, New Zealand

Christchurch

University of Canterbury, located in Christchurch, New Zealand,

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U.S. wants others to fight war with China, says ex-diplomat

THE U.S. WANTS WAR WITH CHINA – but with other people doing the fighting, a whistleblowing Australian diplomat revealed this week.

“The United States is NOT preparing to go to war against China: the United States is preparing Australia to go to war against China,” said John Lander, a former senior ambassador.

He believes China has no intention of invading the southern continent. But a different narrative was foremost in people’s minds because the Americans have a tight grip on Australian government and media, he argued.

BUT AUSTRALIA IS BEING INVADED

Yet there was a hidden irony that people weren’t seeing. 

These IS a country making a massive push into Australia: that country was the United States, not China. Australia’s citizens were “unaware or uncaring that almost every major Australian company across resources, food, retail, mass media, entertainment, banking and finance sectors, has majority American ownership,” Lander said. 

 John Lander 

“Australians fret about China buying up the country but American investment is ten times the size,” he added.

Comments by Lander, one of the country’s top China experts, received wide attention from citizens in Asia and Australia – but virtually no coverage from the media. The ambassador is retired and unafraid to speak openly.

TRAINED BY CIA

Citizens of his country, Lander said, were continually warned about China through reports in the media from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, or ASPI. But it was really “the American Subversive Propaganda Institute”, Lander said. “It has lobbyists from American arms manufacturers on the board, which is headed by an operative trained by the CIA.” ASPI has taken a leading role in spreading the Chinese “concentration camps” story, along with Radio Free Asia, which presents itself as an Asian journalism group, but is actually a CIA-founded operation based in Washington DC.

MASSIVE ARMS SPENDING

The former ambassador’s comments, made in an Salon interview on Sunday, January 22, 2023, are in line with those of other whistleblowers who note that the United States has been working to militarize Australia, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, while western media demonizes China. These two processes together are triggering massive spending on arms in the region, and creating the conditions for war—which would further boost the arms industries in the west.

Lander said that the eight nuclear-powered submarines Australia had been prodded to buy from America for defence were actually for “hunter killer operations in the Taiwan strait”.

LOSS OF SOVEREIGNTY

John Lander was Australia’s Director of the China Section of the Department of Foreign Affairs on three separate occasions, and personally negotiated Consular relations between Australia and China, having worked as a bridge between the two nations for the best part of 30 years.

Lander said he had become increasingly alarmed at the spreading of the notion that war against China is “inevitable”.

While mainstream commentators in Australia took an anti-China stance and pushed the line that that militarization “enhances Australian sovereignty”, the truth was that “these arrangements arguably accede Australian sovereignty to America”, he said. 

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An empire of lies

US targets Google's online ad business monopoly

 

U.S. targets Google's online ad business monopoly in latest Big Tech lawsuit

WASHINGTON, - The U.S. Justice Department accused Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google on Tuesday of abusing its dominance in digital advertising, threatening to dismantle a key business at the heart of one of Silicon Valley's most successful internet companies.

The government said Google should be forced to sell its ad manager suite, tackling a business that generated about 12 percent of Google's revenues in 2021, but also plays a vital role in the search engine and cloud company's overall sales.

"Google has used anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful means to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance over digital advertising technologies," the antitrust complaint said.

Google, whose advertising business is responsible for about 80% of its revenue, said the government was "doubling down on a flawed argument that would slow innovation, raise advertising fees, and make it harder for thousands of small businesses and publishers to grow."

The federal government has said its Big Tech investigations and lawsuits are aimed at leveling the playing field for smaller rivals to a group of powerful companies that includes Amazon.com (AMZN.O), Facebook owner Meta Platforms (META.O) and Apple Inc (AAPL.O).

"By suing Google for monopolizing advertising technology, the DOJ today aims at the heart of the internet giant’s power," said Charlotte Slaiman, competition policy director at Public Knowledge. "The complaint lays out the many anticompetitive strategies from Google that have held our internet ecosystem back."

Tuesday's lawsuit by the administration of President Joe Biden, a Democrat, follows a 2020 antitrust lawsuit brought against Google during the term of Donald Trump, a Republican.

The 2020 lawsuit alleged violations of antitrust law in how the company acquires or maintains its dominance with its monopoly in online search and is scheduled to go to trial in September.

EIGHT STATES IN LAWSUIT

Eight states joined Tuesday's lawsuit, including Google's home state of California.

California State Attorney General Rob Bonta said that Google's practices have "stifled creativity in a space where innovation is crucial."

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said that Google's dominance had led to higher fees for advertisers and less money for publishers with ad space to offer. "We are taking action by filing this lawsuit to unwind Google’s monopoly and restore competition to the digital advertising business," he said in a statement.

Google shares were down 1.9 percent on Tuesday.

 

[1/2] A logo of Google is seen at its exhibition space, at the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France June 15, 2022. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier

In addition to its well-known search, which is free, Google makes revenue through its interlocking ad tech businesses. The government asked for the divestiture of the Google Ad Manager suite, including Google's ad exchange, AdX.

Google Ad Manager is a suite of tools including one that allows websites to offer advertising space for sale and an exchange that serves a marketplace that automatically matches advertisers with those publishers.

Advertisers and website publishers have complained that Google has not been transparent about where ad dollars go, specifically how much goes to publishers and how much to Google.

The lawsuit raises concerns about certain products in the ad tech stack, where publishers and advertisers use Google's tools to buy and sell ad space on other websites. That business was about $31.7 billion in 2021 or 12.3 percent of Google’s total revenue. About 70% of that revenue goes to publishers.

An ad tech divestiture "may not be a game changer but it could be sneaky important to Google's ad targeting capability," said Paul Gallant with the Cowen Washington Research Group.

"It connects to all of Google's other businesses and ties them together. I think Google might be more concerned about losing ad tech down the road than people might think," Gallant said.

The company made a series of purchases, including DoubleClick in 2008 and AdMob in 2009, to help make it a dominant player in online advertising.

'PROJECT POIROT'

While Google remains the market leader by a long shot, its share of the U.S. digital ad revenue has been eroding, falling to 28.8% last year from 36.7% in 2016, according to Insider Intelligence.

The Justice Department asked for a jury to decide the case, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

The lawsuit lays out a number of Google's attempts to dominate the advertising market.

The complaint discussed header bidding, which was a way that companies could bypass Google to bid on ad space on websites.

It lays out a series of projects including one dubbed "Project Poirot" named after Agatha Christie’s master detective, Hercule Poirot. The project "was designed to identify and respond effectively to ad exchanges that had adopted header bidding technology."

The 149-page complaint said Google doubled down after Project Poirot's initial success in manipulating its advertisers' spending to reduce competition from rival ad exchanges. Rivals AppNexus/Xandr lost 31% of DV360 advertiser spending, Rubicon would lose 22%, OpenX would lose 42%, and Pubmatic would lose 26%, the complaint said.

Reporting by Diane Bartz and David Shepardson; additional reporting by Sheila Dang; editing by Chris Sanders and Grant McCool

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