Results for Opinion

Next year’s “Talanoa Dialogue” – to be convened by Fiji, which last week became the first island state to chair UN climate talks – will help countries identify exactly how they can achieve the goals set in the Paris agreement. That dialogue, which countries should approach in good faith, must be a springboard for further action. By Hilda Heine and Kevin Rudd

Over the last few weeks there has been ample amounts of negative media attention given to Mate Ma'a Tonga fans. I in no way support fans fighting or being aggressive and it is worrying. However, what I am most concerned about is the amount of negative articles that have been circulated by some media outlets. The constant reporting of a few incidents where a minority group of fans were fighting has dominated the media and has painted all Mate Ma'a Tonga fans as being out of control. - Jean Allen

Perhaps the most enduring lesson of Luther’s call for a scholarly debate – and his use of technology to deliver his views – is that it failed. Instead of a series of public discussions about the Church’s evolving authority, the Protestant Reformation became a bitter battle played out via mass communication .... The question today is how we can ensure that new technologies support constructive debate. The world remains full of heresies that threaten our identities and cherished institutions; the difficulty is to view them not as ideas that must be violently suppressed, but as opportunities to understand where and how current institutions are excluding people or failing to deliver promised benefits. By Nicholas Davis.

For the last 40 years, China has implemented a national strategy that, despite its many twists and turns, has produced the economic and political juggernaut we see today. It would be reckless to assume, as many still do in the US, Europe, and elsewhere, that China’s transition to global preeminence will somehow simply implode, under the weight of the political and economic contradictions they believe to be inherent to the Chinese model. ...When China does become the world’s largest economy over the next decade, the current rule-based international order will not remain immune from this fundamental geo-economic and geopolitical change....To believe otherwise is willfully to ignore the deep changes that are now afoot. By Kevin Rudd

With Tonga only weeks away from a snap General Election, the Tonga government is taking full control of the Tonga Broadcasting Commission, in a move that has annihilated its right to function as an honest Public Broadcaster. Its two most senior journalists have been ordered out of the newsroom and into a corner. By Pesi Fonua

This weekend, Stephen Paddock opened fire on a country music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada, from an overlooking hotel, killing at least 59 people and injuring more than 500 others. Paddock, a 64-year-old former accountant with no criminal record, was ultimately found in his hotel room, dead, with some 23 guns, including more than ten assault weapons. Police later found an additional 19 firearms, explosives, and several thousands of rounds of ammunition in Paddock’s home. What the authorities have not yet found, however, is a motive.

Myanmar is in crisis. The Rohingya – a Muslim ethnic minority group in a predominantly Buddhist country – are under attack by the military, with many fleeing for their lives. This escalating conflict is threatening to undermine Myanmar’s ongoing democratic transition – and to tarnish irrevocably the reputation of the country’s de facto leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. By Syed Munir Khasru.

With every new crisis that the world faces, humanity’s differences appear increasingly intractable. Religion, ethnicity, history, politics, and economics have all become tools to denigrate and demean. People seem to be drifting apart, and no country is immune from divisive discourse. But there is one fundamental issue where contrasts dissolve into consensus: the desire to keep children safe. By Kailash Satyarthi.

Fakamalo atu ki he ‘Ateni Seniale he fakamahino ki he tukunga ‘o e tu’utu’uni kuo hifo mei he’ene ‘Afio fekau’aki mo e Palemia, mo e kau Minisita ‘o e Kapineti pea pehe ki he Pule’anga fakakatoa.