Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

"On Thursday afternoon pro-democracy activists rallied, and then mostly disaffected, and then often drunk, youths, all but trashed or burned much of the CBD of Nuku'alofa. Such an eruption should not have been entirely suprising given the steadily escalating pressure for serious and prompt governance and constitutional reform that's been building in the Kingdom for several years, coupled with austerity measures imposed on the country by the new government, often under pressure from agencies like the World Bank. The scale and ferocity of the riot, and the deaths of eight people, apparently looters, caught up in it, was the really shocking part.": Dr Mark Hayes

"The Government’s current policy direction on Aborigines, which has gained momentum in recent months, has all of the hallmarks of the assimilationism that led to the stolen generation. The methods and the rhetoric are far subtler – and obviously less cruel - than those of the Government’s predecessors, but the aim is identical and arguably just as pernicious: the assimilation of Aborigines into the mainstream.": David Curry